Rose of No Man's Land

by Michelle Tea

  What Should We Do? I asked Rose. The place was squat before us. Shaggy piñatas dangled from the awning. Inside I saw waiters wearing sombreros trimmed with little pompoms.

  Let’s go inside, she said. You want to eat some chips?

  Yeah, I nodded. Now I had a focus. Chips would save me.

  You want real food? We can get tacos or something. I have a bunch of money still.

  I thought of tacos, stuffed with blobs of white cream and globules of crumbly meat. My stomach lurched, then sealed itself off. Even chips seemed brittle and greasy if I thought about it too much. I wouldn’t think, I’d just eat. We pushed into the place and were overwhelmed by the music. The place was a real party on the inside. They had it all dressed up like Friday night in Mexico. Striped blankets swagged from the splintery roof beams, spinning ceiling fans tossing their fringed ends around above our heads. Mexican words were painted on the walls, beside murals of Mexican women dancing around in fluffy dresses. The walls themselves had been painted to look old and kind of dirty. They were yellow with faint brown streaks and creases. At the bar a bunch of jocks watched sports on a TV and drank jellybean-colored drinks in margarita glasses the size of punch bowls.

  Two? A waitress asked us. We nodded dumbly, were led to a wooden table in the middle of everything. Plastic donkeys smiled with big teeth on a shelf above our heads. The salt and pepper shakers were Mexican beer bottles. A man quickly placed two giant plastic cups of water onto our table, followed by a basket of chips and a dish of chunky salsa.

  Yes! Rose cheered. She grabbed a chip and started poking it into the salsa. I waited for her to eat it, but she didn’t. She was just piling stuff onto it, a juicy tower of tomato, onion, cucumber. When it toppled onto the table, she started over. This place is great but I’m going to get bored of it real fast. In fact, I’m already bored. I hate that about speed. Sometimes, I just have an idea and then I’m bored with it before I even do it.

  Aren’t You Going To Eat? I asked. I gulped some water. It felt like medicine, going down. My whole body went aaaaahhh.

  No, Rose said, but you should. You look lousy.

  My hand went up to my face, as if lousy was a bumpy, tangible object sitting on my cheek. I Do? Rose didn’t look so hot herself. Her skin looked a little glow-in-the-dark, and there were red blotches on her face that looked scaly. The blotches ran down her arms, too. Her arms looked webbed with some awful red flush. Beneath the bright lights of the restaurant, Rose was looking X-Files. There’s Something Wrong With Your Arms, I said.

  Rose folded them into herself like a pair of grasshopper legs. She rubbed them roughly. It’s my circulation, she explained. The speed does something to your circulation. It’s no big deal.

  I looked at my own arms, poking out of my T-shirt. They looked fine to me. My Arms Are Okay, I said.

  I’m anemic, so it’s worse for me, Rose said. But really, your face looks too white or something. You should maybe eat. Did you eat today, since what I gave you at the Clown? I shook my head. Come on, eat then! I know it’s nasty, but if you don’t eat we’re not going to have as much fun. C’mon, dude. She shook the basket of chips at me. They were warm, tucked into a cloth napkin. They were so oily they shone. I looked at them like some sort of athletic dare. I would eat the chips. I began lubing them up in the chunky salsa and stuffing them into my mouth. I crunched and crunched. The stiff chips snapped beneath my teeth, tortilla splinters jabbed my gums and tore up my mouth. My mouth felt weird. That drug drip kept recurring like an underground stream. My gums felt tight, like they were shrinking away. It made my teeth feel wobbly in my head. Giant head and shrunken gums, waggly teeth, I was a jack-o’-lantern. I was sick of the violent tortilla chips. I wiped my fingers on the cloth napkin and pushed the basket back toward Rose, guzzled the rest of my water.

  I Feel Weird, I said. I Want To Get Out Of Here. I Hate These Lights and I Hate These People. The people all around us were hooting with merriment. Their goblets of margarita had made them so happy and now they could cut loose and bray and be obnoxious. I was glad alcohol didn’t have that effect on me. Alcohol made me woozy and spinny and perfect. I wanted to get somewhere where we could crack open another Yikes, maybe do more of the drugs. Do We Need To Do More? I asked Rose. She shook her head.

  We shouldn’t. It’s just weird in here. Location is really important if you’re on drugs and I don’t think this is the ultimate location. It’s boring. I swore the waitress heard Rose say the d-word. She came over to us, pompoms swaying on her decorative sombrero. Her waitress pad was tucked into what looked like a miniature Mexican blanket wound around her waist.

  You girls know what you want? She barked, no-nonsense.

  Ah, we’re just going to leave, Rose said. The waitress looked down at the tortilla debris littering my placemat, the splatters of tomato staining the tablecloth by Rose. Our empty cups of water.

  Get out then, she spat. Jesus Christ. What are you on? She gave us the up-and-down. You look like shit, girls.

  I told you, Rose said, and we cracked up. The waitress looked pissed. Rose grabbed my ass as we tore through the restaurant, dodging parties of four and five, their faces grossly greenish-pink under the fluorescents, gesturing with their drinks, kids yammering and stuffing tacos into their tiny yaps, spilling beans and cheese out the other end. The total grossness of humanity. They all looked like shit too. At least we had an excuse. Rose grabbed my ass just for show, I know, just as a way of saying fuck you to the waitress but I didn’t feel used. I was glad that Rose had remembered about my ass. That it was there. I was happy to be part of her stunt.

  Out in the parking lot we tore a Yikes from the backpack and wrenched it open. Rose slurped the fizz and punched her fist-wrapped bottle into the air, sang along with the Mexican music pumped out of the speakers. You Know This Song? I asked.

  No. I’m just making shit up. Here — she thrust the bottle at me. I took a long gulp. I still felt shaky, but not like I had earlier, like a balloon with the air farting out from it, my life force leaking away. Now I felt shaky but excited, like I wanted to run around. I was getting the hang of the crystal, the ups and downs of it inside my body, the roller-coaster track it had laid along my veins, the loop-de-loop where my heart used to pump. We ran over to the steak house and climbed around on the big fake cows until the parking lot attendant kicked us out. It had taken a few tries to successfully get up on one. They were wide-backed and slick-surfaced, heavy metal cows painted cow-colored and spotty. There was nothing to grip. We kept sliding off like it was a bucking bronco or something, landing on our asses in the woodchips strewn about the place. That steak house is a real popular location. The skyscraper cactus shot a groovy green light down onto us, and on the other side of the fence a long line of people wrapped around the front porch, waiting to be seated. They watched us clambering around like a couple of clowns and some of them even booed the parking lot dude when he came and hauled us out. Thank you! Rose hollered at the crowd. She waved one scrawny arm in the air. Thank you! Her other arm was held tight by the parking lot dude. He had one of mine too, and was manhandling us away from the cows.

  All right, guy! Rose twisted. Shit. She broke away.

  Where are your parents? He demanded.

  Where Are Your Parents? I shot back weakly.

  Yeah, where are your parents? Rose mocked. He let us go so we could pull ourselves over the fence. The fence was a bunch of cut-down trees all crisscrossed together. Real authentic looking. That was the look here on Route 1, authentic phoniness. We hauled ourselves over the lumber and took off for the side of the road. Fuck yooooooouuuuuu! Rose yodeled. Next we hit the majestic Chinese restaurant. The outside was a pagoda and that was great enough right there, a pagoda in the middle of Mogsfield. I didn’t even care about the indoor river, but then there it was. It was bubbling and splashing right at the entrance, and it ran off in the direction of some dining rooms. Everything was bright red, and everything that wasn’t bright red was a gold that shot the ligh
t around like we were up inside a giant neon sign. There was some green too, a jade color in the eyes of the enormous dragons that lurched in a tasseled arc above our heads. The dragon’s jade eyes swirled with PCP craziness and red-golden fake flames curled out from its wide dragon nostrils. More green in the leafy plants sprouted wildly along the banks of the impossible indoor river. There was even a planked bridge spanning one little area, where the water calmed and pooled. Some little kids were standing on it, plopping shiny coins overboard, making little-kid wishes.

  I had some serious wishes to make. They were all piled up behind my throat, buzzing in my brain. I wished to kiss Rose again and touch her boobs, I wished to never again see Monster Paulie, to always feel good inside and never crash like Kim Porciatti and try to kill myself. I wished that Rose would grab my ass again and that when we were done with Yikes someone would buy us more. I wished for a magical pack of unending cigarettes. I wished that I would become a new and better person, new and improved, supersized with crazycool confidence and daring. I could feel it already happening and I wished for it to never stop. I even wished that Kristy got on to The Real World, I wished that Mom would get better in her mind and in her body, I wished for my dad to be alive, for him to find me and call me on the telephone. Donnie, I didn’t know what to wish for him. I personally wished he would leave but that would make Ma sad, and if I was wishing for Ma to be happy how could I wish for Donnie to vanish? Rose, I Want To Make A Wish, I said to her. She was stroking this giant golden statue that looked like a pug dog on steroids. Her fingers followed the curving grooves of its spiraling tongue.

  This is like being in a museum or something, she breathed. She loved the pumped-up pug. I bet these are replicas of real statues. I bet these are real works of art somewhere. The kids on the bridge scattered away, laughing. People came and went and nobody was paying any attention to us. Rose turned from the dog. I gotta pee, she told me, and I brought her over the bridge, toward the carpeted hallway where the restrooms were. Inside it was pink and green, everything still polished and creamy. Rose went straight for the handicapped stall at the end of the bank of toilets. C’mon, she pulled me inside. She hopped onto the can and tinkled. She tugged her underwear out and took a peek. A wide spot of blood was spreading across the cotton. Shit, I need to find a new tampon, okay? Don’t let me forget. She blotted her drawers with a square of toilet paper, then tossed it between her legs into the bowl. Want to do more? she mouthed at me. Her voice was lower than a whisper.

  More Of What? I asked. I felt bold. I felt like all the wishes I intended to make had been granted just by me thinking about them, like I had some direct hotline to the cosmos all of a sudden. I went into the backpack and tugged open a Yikes. One more to go. I barely felt drunk, just flying and delirious with excellence. More Of Making Out? I flicked the jagged Yikes cap against the wall like I had with the cigarette earlier. It bounced against the wall and spun like a top upon the floor. Rose swiped a ball of toilet paper over her parts and tugged her stained drawers back up. Swoosh, the nightgown cascaded over her. I looked at the floor, my cheeks stinging. The words had flown out of my mouth, hung in the still air of the handicapped stall, gathered themselves together and bitch-slapped me.

  Okay, she said, like I’d asked her for a cigarette. But wait. Digging in the bag she brought out the tiny diamond-sack of crystal, plus my house keys. She dunked the tip of the key into the snowy glitter and removed it. A dusting of sprinkles clung to the metal. That’s more than enough I think. If we even need to do any more. She stuck the key into a tiny train tunnel of nose and snorted. It barely stings, she said. I thought perhaps the huff we did back in the golf course had seared away all our nerve endings. She offered me a freshly dunked keytip. My mother would freak if she knew I was out shoving dirty housekeys up my nose. Your nose, she would say, is your first line of defense against the common cold. The webbing of mucus stretched grotesquely over little hairs up there acts like a giant trap that snags all incoming germ-missles. Ma would kill me if she knew I was just introducing a germy ol’ key right into my germ trap. She probably wouldn’t even care about the battery acid-derived drugs that were hanging all over the key, no. It was the unseen microbes that would give her a shitfit.

  I took a huff and the crystals tinkled into me. My body felt wrung of everything but the drugs and the Yikes. The crystal dramatically plunged downward to my general crotch area, a penny cast into my wishing pool. I grabbed Rose’s scaly arms. It was like the drug had forged new paths for blood to flow in her body. It was either oddly pretty or disturbing and scary, and I didn’t want to deal with disturbing and scary when I was feeling so great. I let my head knock back against the pink stall wall. I Feel Fucking Fantastic, I said, my feet bouncing in my flops. I Love This Stuff. It forced you to move, to fling out your arms, to shuffle around or really just do anything. I looked at Rose. I pulled Rose toward me by her mutant arms. I pulled her into my face and I kissed her. It was sort of bumpy at first, I knocked her with my teeth, tooth against tooth, and her nose seemed like it grew since we kissed in the golf course, but then it was fine. Then it was great again, maybe even better because I wasn’t afraid I was dying. We slurped and bit and Rose banged her body up against mine again and again, like a wind was knocking her into me, like we were wind chimes dangling in a breeze. It was so great that we were both girls and could go into the women’s room together. My hands were on the back of Rose’s skull, so small in my hands it felt like I could crush it, and my fingers tightened around it to reassure myself of its solidity, that it was a real skull and not a collapsable doll head. I did not know where Rose’s hands were until they were at the elastic waistband, burrowing beneath it, fingers running along the red grooves it had left in my belly, and then down and down again, so nervy, right there at my underwear and then underneath and then still not stopping, not gently stroking like I had on the Astroturf but prying, nimbly burrowing, and I did not know what she was doing but was curious and so I moved to accommodate her, I slid my legs apart, back against the wall, face mashed into her hotly breathing face, and my heel slid off my flop and I kicked it to the tiled floor, I kicked them both off, and Rose’s fingers were crawling up inside of me and I didn’t think I could take it and then I could. She was messy and graceless and it didn’t matter, my body was an electric force field, it radiated everything it contacted, was melting Rose’s hand, was merging into it, her hand would surely have to become part of my body after this, my body was being forever changed right here in the handicapped stall of the Chinese restaurant, Rose was breaking and entering and stealing something and replacing it with something else, something better, herself. An inside smell wafted up around us and I knew it was me and that was okay because it didn’t smell the way you always hear that it smells, like tuna, like a bag of lettuce gone bad in the fridge. It just smelled sort of warm, it smelled like wet motion, a river whipping around a rock. Rose kept at it. It was drawing noises from me, they went from my mouth into her. It was a strange, subterranean way of talking. My body bloomed around her fingers like a man-eating flower. I always had believed it would hurt and smell and be terrible and lonely, and if I had gone to a psychic and heard you will lose your virginity in the bathroom of a Chinese restaurant I would have known it was true, the worst, and I would have never left my house and never met Rose or crystal. And now I’d done it and now Rose left me, she rested her wet paw on my hip beneath my sweats and the kissing, so crazed, began to slow and slow and stop and then we were still, heart and blood and drugs racing on the inside but still on the outside, in a bubble it seemed, a floating bubble of pink and jade tile. And it’s true I felt smashed on the inside, my body a smear across my underwear, some new part of me alive and humming and yes, absolutely, this was the greatest day of my life.

  Twenty-three

  I teetered like a suicide on the outside edge of the bridge. Do it! Rose goaded me from behind. We’d decided not to cast coin wishes into the water because really, that would just be givin
g money away to some giant restaurant that was so superrich they could afford to plant a swear-to-god river smack through the joint, so rich that they could wash everything in gold and have chandeliers the size of spaceships swaying over our heads. Is that who we wanted to give our spare change to? Absolutely not. We’d stared at the sparkling disks of pennies and quarters wavering under the water and figured there had to be at least a hundred dollars down there. I would jump in and get it. I would do it because I had stupidly left my flops in the bathroom and was conveniently barefoot. Rose’s crumpled sneakers were held together with a scab of fibrous duct tape and if she took them off she feared they would disintegrate once and for all, so why didn’t I do it. Scavenge the money for us. We didn’t even need it, with Rose’s Clown cash we were loaded, but it just seemed like a real waste to let so much money sit there underwater. I looked down into the pool. Fat striped fish wiggled beneath the surface, orange and red and white. Their fins were as thin and gauzy as Rose’s nightgown, they blew around in some mysterious underwater breeze.